Jasmin Glaesser wins road race gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games; teammate Allison Beveridge wins third

With her gold medal win at Saturday’s women’s road race at the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games, Canada’s Jasmin Glaesser has taken a medal in every cycling event so far. Under cloudy, humid conditions with the threat of rain lingering throughout the race, her performance adds to Canada’s commanding medal count, with Marlies Mejias taking silver for Cuba.

Allison Beveridge, meanwhile, took bronze in third.

Shortly after 1 p.m. EDT, the race left the start-finish line at Ontario Place, heading west along Lakeshore Boulevard towards Toronto’s historic High Park. Conditions were hot and loaded with humidity, bearing all the signs of a thunderstorm as the race neared the first climb up Centre Road towards Ellis Drive, entering the vicinity of the Park. Thankfully, though, with the exception of a shower that left the road’s surface a little slick, no severe headwinds broke the rider’s momentum, and no dangerously inclement conditions presented themselves. From early in the competition, despite that oppressive humidity, race conditions seemed favourable.

The field consisted of about 30 riders, all vying for top medal standings as the 82.5 km race began. After finishing the first stretch along Lakeshore Boulevard, the bunch entered High Park with a hairpin left turn on to High Park Boulevard. From there, the pack hit the first climb on Centre Road — a 500 m climb with a 3% grade.

Almost immediately, Canada’s Kirsti Lay made an early drive for the front, leading that climb into High Park. With the peloton still together as the race neared the conclusion of its first lap, Lay and Glaesser lead the pack. After 26:42, the first lap was finished with a few scattered attacks, but no significant breakaways. The peloton remained intact as it entered High Park a second time, but by the time it hit Parkside Drive, the makeup of the front had been shaken up somewhat. Then, it was Glaesser in third position, with Mexico’s Drexrel Clouthier and Brazil’s Janildes Fernandes Silva holding the lead spots.

That second lap proved to be tough for some riders. Maria Vargas, Cynthia Lee, Jasmin Soto, and Daniela Guajardo all dropped, followed shortly thereafter by Mariela Delgado. Clemilda Fernandes, Zuralmy Rivas, Camila Valbuena, and Tamicko Butler were all off the back next.

By that point in the race, showers had turned the asphalt wet. Attacks from Canada’s riders kept the peloton together once more as it passed the start-finish line at Ontario Place .

As the third lap ended, the dynamic at the front of the pack changed once again, with Canada’s Glaesser once again in the lead at its end, followed by Ruth Winder of the United States. With notable Pan Am successes in BMX, mountain, track, and road time trial contests, though, South America’s teams were suspected of putting a target on Canadian riders, the rumblings of team brass indicated. Still, Team Canada kept it together, driving at the front of a peloton whose front group had notably diminished compared with the first two laps of the race.

With Winder struggling on the Centre Road climb as the pack once again entered High Park, though, Glaesser and Marlies Mejias were off the front, putting Canada and Cuba in respective first and second positions. Their lead on the peloton kept them about 40 to 45 seconds ahead, building to a minute’s lead as the race entered its final lap. Then, it was 1:10 on the peloton, then 1:14, with the main group struggling.

As that final lap ended, Glaesser’s sprint put her in first place ahead of Mejias, with both riders crossing the finish at 2:07:17. In third place, Beveridge crossed the finish at 2:07:51, 34 seconds behind both.

“My whole team was keeping it super hard and aggressive for pretty much the first 40 or 50 k of the race,” Glaesser said, “and we were just attacking one another, countering every move. When I went, it had eased up a little bit. I seized that opportunity to launch off the front. The Cuban rider [Marlies Mejias] bridged up to me. We worked together pretty well for the remainder of the race.”

With Mejias hot on her wheels, though, Glaesser knew she had work to do to maintain her position. “I know that she is a really, really strong sprinter,” she said of the Cuban rider, “especially out on the road. So for me it was about trying to save as much energy as I could for the sprint at the end and trying to make sure she was doing her fair amount of work out in the breakaway. I think that what paid off in the end was having a little bit more in the tank.”

“When I knew I got out ahead of her, it was just the best feeling in the world,” Glaesser added. “I can’t describe it. I was just so ecstatic.” No doubt, what motivated her going into Saturday’s competition certainly helped. “I think for me it was the motivation of being on home soil. It’s been a once in a lifetime opportunity really, to compete in front of a home crowd. I took it race by race and really tried to recover when I could.”

“We knew as a team we had to just race,” Beveridge said of her teammates’ performance, “race, and race hard, and make it hard on everyone.” Keeping Glaesser out front, while staying on the wheels of other riders, not giving them in an inch, was the strategy that prevailed for Canada. And with Glaesser in the lead, Beveridge said, that opened up other opportunities for the team to keep that heat turned up.

“It was good,” the third-place finisher said of her two medals at the Pan Am Games. “It was a really nice way to finish it off.”